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LG: Okay, we'll definitely talk about the house a little bit. You mentioned that your parents met when they were at the university?

MR: University of Hawaii, apparently.

LG: Did you ever hear...

MR: No, I don't think so. I remember him telling stories about, what was that about? What were they going to do when I was crying? I can't remember how that was resolved, there seemed to be a problem with making noise when I was a little baby, they had to resolve that, I don't know what they did. I'm sorry, I don't remember about their relationship. I don't know that she talked that much, that I have any stories about Saburo.

LG: Did she talk much about him or about what their relationship was like? You mentioned that he waited seven years before they could get married?

MR: Uh-huh, that's true. See, I don't have any conscious memories of Saburo really. You know those little pictures, those little letters, the letters, I do have memories, I must have been only about two. I have a memory of when he was killed, because we were living in a little apartment above Central Park. In your little thing, Saburo... what was your piece of paper saying? About something was not quite accurate, but where's my piece of paper? It's hidden away.

LR: You're sitting on it.

MR: I'm sitting on it.

MR: But you were saying at the beginning, at the beginning of this thing, okay, Louise moved to New York City after, she moved to New York City after, I guess it was maybe a year and a half or something, Saburo was training in Mississippi, down in wherever that is in Mississippi, Fort Shelby. Yeah, I think so. And we used to bring me to see him, so Louise got on a train. Somehow I got permission for her to come from Hawaii to Mississippi across the United States, she was coming across the United States in a train with an FBI escort. She had an FBI agent to escort her. When she went to the bathroom, he was there at the door until she came out. I don't know whether that was all the way through, but it was a good way. And then she went down to, she took me down to Mississippi, and when he shipped out, that's when she came up to New York and we were in this little apartment. Now, I remember, I must have been like a year and a half or something like that, I remember the day she got the telegram. I vaguely remember she got up or something, maybe she went to the little tiny apartment door, and then all of a sudden she was lying on the bed crying. And here I am, I didn't know what to do. So I'm trying to comfort her, and I'm hungry for breakfast. [Laughs] She finally got up and made breakfast and things like that. And what also I remember in that apartment, was there was this great big comfortable chair. And I would climb, she would read me the letters from Saburo, and she probably read me other things, but I know she always come in the chair and read these letters. And I would to have them read every day, so that if I have memories of Saburo, they're mainly from those letters, I think, because that's what I remember. And I guess that's after... and then after, of course, when Saburo died, she wanted to get back to Hawaii, but they wouldn't, she couldn't get back from Europe, and the war was going on in Japan, so she could not get passage. So then she came down, since she had contacts in Philadelphia, she came down and got herself employment in Philadelphia, and that's where we settled.

LG: So you know who his contacts were and how he had a connection?

MR: Who?

LG: You said Saburo had contacts.

MR: No it was Louise that had the contacts, because she'd gone to school, the School of Social Work here at the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Work.

LR: [Inaudible].

MR: Pardon?

LR: [Inaudible].

MR: Oh, a lot of guys went to Penn. That's where, all these boarders were all going to, most likely University of Pennsylvania, I think maybe some were going to medical school. I think Sam went to Horton, I think. But Sam and his family headed to Portland here in Philadelphia. I remember us going to dinners and things like that, and growing up with my cousin David, playing around with David. I think we would get dressed up or something like that, play around.

LG: So Louise went to University of Hawaii, got her bachelor's.

MR: Bachelor's, and then she got her master's. She worked for a while -- this is what, why it took so long for them to get married, because she had to work to get money to come down here and get her master's, I think that's what the story was.

LG: And then she returned to Hawaii?

MR: No, she never returned to Hawaii.

LG: Okay. So could you walk me through...

MR: She never got back to Hawaii. She went and got... no, no, she was back in Hawaii.

LR: She was back in Hawaii and got married.

MR: And then she got married and had me. It was when she came across, she brought me to see my dad.

LR: At Camp Shelby?

MR: At Camp Shelby, and then she got stuck after the war. And so she came down here and that's where she stayed.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2023 JACL Philadelphia. All Rights Reserved.